Businesses impacted by flood strengthened by community

Amy Hamrick said she always wanted to be responsible for a community-minded coffee shop. When she started Kind Coffee in 2002, she wanted it to be a place where visitors could experience Estes Park and locals could work or gather.

The morning her business flooded on September 12, 2013, she remembers not sleeping well the night before.

"There had been so much rain and police in our neighborhood," she said. "I think there was just sort of a nervous and unsettling kind of energy that was out there. Something was telling me that something wasn't right."

By the time she got to work early that morning, she remembers a crowd of people already being there. Looking back, she sees it as an important time to be open.

A cyclist attempts a ride down Elkhorn Avenue on Sept. 13. By the next day, the ride was much easier as the rivers receded. (Walt Hester / Estes Park Trail-Gazette)

"That's kind of the part of having the coffee shop, is that people come here to gather and everyone kind of came in like 'What's going on? What do you know? What have you heard? What's happening in your neighborhood?" she said.

Hamrick said everyone was watching the water levels rise from the Riverwalk, trying to estimate how much time there would be for damage control if the shop flooded from the back. But instead the parking lot started flooding. Hamrick explained that the river had breached upstream and came back down the road.

"The whole river had diverted onto the street and then we were like the drain back to the river, the deck back here." she said. "I don't think that it took ten minutes from the time that the parking lot started having water in it to being totally flooded."

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Hamrick's story resembles the stories of many Estes Park businesses entangled in the 2013 flood. Down the Riverwalk from Kind Coffee stand Poppy's Pizza & Grill and Mama Rosa's which are owned by Rob and Julie Pieper.

At Poppy's that morning, Rob Pieper remembers getting a call from the American Red Cross asking if he could make sandwiches for a few people who had been evacuated from their homes. While in the kitchen, he said his phone was nonstop.

A photo taken from the parking lot of Town Hall on Sept. 12, 2013. Some businesses only took days to reopen, but others took months, and some never reopened. (Courtesy of the Town of Estes Park)

"I pick up a text and it was my wife saying 'Get out of there because it's flooding," he said. At that point there was a little bit of water on the sidewalk. He went back inside and received another text from his wife urging him to leave. That's when he went to the front door.

"All of a sudden through the front door just a little trickle of water, a little stream of water started coming in," he said. "Being the logical thinker that I am, I grabbed a mop and bucket thinking I could mop it up."

Pieper said after the flood receded, he offered to keep his staff on payroll in exchange for help cleaning the restaurant. It was the outpour of resourcefulness his staff expressed that stunned him.

Hamrick describes receiving a similar level of aid from employees, but also the community.

"It was really eye-opening to see how important it was for people to try and help," she said. "It's weird to be on the receiving side of that. It was kind of humbling and kind of hard for me to just say 'Yes, please come help.'"

Over 70 Estes Park businesses received Recover Colorado Business Grants that year. Though it's hard to pinpoint how many businesses were impacted by the flood, business owners can tell stories of shoveling mud out of their restaurants, pulling up the carpet in their stores or how much revenue they lost that year due to road closures.

Both Kind and Poppy's opened roughly three months after the flood and attribute that time period to assistance from staff and community. Five years later, neither business would say it's fully prepared for another flood, should one occur. Though both learned little life lessons from the experience.

Hamrick knows that Kind Coffee can flood from the front, Pieper knows he can't wipe up a flood with a mop and both wouldn't have gotten through the aftermath of flood without help from the community in and out of their businesses.

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